what was the last 'classic album' you got and were knocked out by?

Sidebar Starbucks fact: When I worked there, if you ever wanted to put your own CDs on the stereo (instead of Starbucks-approved CDs) it would play them backwards

Like in reverse track order, or “I buried Paul” backwards?

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_Graffiti

"I buried Paul", literally-backwards style

surely you mean "turn me on, dead man."

Or "wolf in white van."

have we ever done thread for songs that sound good when played backwards?

I didn't realize a CD could be played backwards without a CDJ.

I still have fond memories of a set Ken Goldsmith did on WFMU consisting of Rolling Stones songs played backwards.

Don't own it yet but is Discover America great or what

The funny thing about it was it still sounded like the Stones. xp

Full House by Fairport Convention. I've loved Unhalfbricking and Liege & Lief for years but never bothered to listen to any other Fairport album, largely due to the absence of Sandy Denny. Only recently did the penny drop that Richard Thompson was still in the band for Full House and indeed assumed greater importance in the line-up. It never scales the heights of Unhalfbricking or Liege & Lief, but "Sloth" is great and the single Now Be Thankful (bonus track on the CD reissue) is superb.

Madonna’s Like a Prayer

First 2 Fairport lps are pretty great too if you haven't looked in that direction. I enjoy Judy Dyble both on the s/t and on Trader Horne.
Sandy has joined by What We Did On Our Holidays though iain Matthews is still co lead singer.
& the North Star Grassman and the Ravens is good for Sandy playing against Richard still. Bits of incidental guitar sound quite Televisiony or vice versa too.

'sloth' is so good, half of it sounds like television playing a slint song

The Djangology records with Django Reinhardt and Stephane Grapelli

I confess I've never been that interested in 50s rock and roll so haven't listened to that much of it but I've just listened to the first two Gene Vincent albums, "Bluejean Bop!" and "Gene Vincent & the Blue Caps" and they are fucking great. I can totally see why so many people rate him as the best of the best. Great singer, so charismatic and exciting, and Cliff Gallup's guitar playing is absolutely out of this world, that guy must have blown so many people's minds when they first heard him. Both albums are good all the way through, even the corny old schools ballads are good because Vincent totally sells them, he had a sweet voice when he wanted to.

Yeah, there's a reason the Birthday Party covered "Cat Man", he was totally wild out of the gate.

Just got a Patsy Cline 3cd that is pretty great. For some reason I didn't really know her work beyond a couple of ubiquitous hits which I like half knew and had heard numerous times without owning.
She has an incredible voice for one thing and I'm really enjoying the settings. She has pretty stripped down sound expanded massively by a pedal steel guitar which seems to define the outlines of the sound picture. I heard teh Walking After Midnight here and was reminded of Boces era Mercury Rev by that amorphous envelope of guitar, not sure if I'd map it back though. Did wonder who had picked up on the sound I'm hearing here, I guess Cowboy Junkies possibly but it does just seem like the kind of thing that might describe new sound worlds if listened to on acid or some similar cliche. Not sure what I was expecting, I think I was prompted to finally pick up a set of her stuff by reading about her being friends with Loretta Lynn when I finally picked up a best of her stuff a few weeks ago.
She does cover a number of different styles from some overtly country to some stuff thgat might be more pop polus pedal steel and a few tracks of rock and roll.
Anyway, got a cheap 3cd so have some stuff to explore.
Just wondering how I overlooked her for so long. She's pretty well known so surprised i haven't found a previous point at which I did so. I do enjoy Julie London, Peggy lee, Frank Sinatra and a few other similar era torch singer/crooner types but am loving this.
& now wondering on the pedal steel guitar as psychedelic instrument beyond Glenn Ross Campbell, possibly Sneaky Pete Kleinow and the cloud of pedal steel that hovers throughout the Gun Club's Miami played by Mark Tomeo.

Psychedelic pedal steel? Red Rhodes on anything he did with Mike Nesmith is your ticket.

Yeah, should know their work better. Got the classic albums bor whatever box at the start of the year.

Would love to hear what Blixa Bargeld was doing with pedal steel he was apparently studying it just before he apparently gave up playing guitar live. He stepped back from being one of the 2 Neubauten guitarists when Alex hacke became bassist and the new permanent line up stabilised.

North Star Grassman and the Ravens is good for Sandy playing against Richard still. Bits of incidental guitar sound quite Televisiony or vice versa too.

The version of "Backwaterside" is very Televisiony/Velvetsy, even reminds me of "How Soon Is Now?"

Lately, I can't seem to get enough of Skin Tight, Fire, and Honey by the Ohio Players.

My favourite new-to-me LPs heard in 2022, all have music from the years 1948-1956

Akira Ifukube – Godzilla OST
Art Blakey – A Night at Birdland
Astor Piazzolla – Ses Premiers Enregisrements
Benny More Y Su Banda Giganta – Grabaciones Completas
Bernard Hermann – The Day The Earth Stood Still OST
Bo Diddley – The Indispensible Bo Diddley, Vol.1
Four Freshmen – Four Freshmen and Five Trombones
Frank Sinatra – In The Wee Small Hours
Glenn Gould – The Goldberg Variations
J.J. Johnson with Clifford Brown – J.J. Johnson with Clifford Brown
Jackson Do Pandeiro – Sua Majestade: O Rei Do Ritmo
Jerry Byrd – Early Country & Hawaiian Steel Guitar Classics
Les Baxter – The Exotic Moods of Les Baxter
Maria Tanase – Malediction d’Amour
Mahalia Jackson – Gospels, Spirituals & Hymns
Maxima Mejia – Los Grandes Exitos de Maxima Mejia
Miles David – The Complete Blue Note Sessions
Moondog – Moondog & His Honking Geese
Peggy Lee – Black Coffee with Peggy Lee
Salum Abdallah & Cuban Marimba – Ngoma Iko Huku
Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant – Stratosphere Boogie: The Flaming Guitars of Speedy West & Jimmy Bryant
Stan Kenton – New Concepts of Artistry in Rhythm
Thelonious Monk – Genius of Modern Music Vol 1/2
Various – 1950: The Bomb In The Heart of The Century
Various – Africa at 78RPM
Various – Atlantic Rhythm & Blues 1947-1974
Various – Blowing The Fuse (Series)
Various – Dim Lights, Thick Smoke and Hillbilly Music: Country & Western Hit Parade (Series)
Various – Forgotten Guitars from Mozambique
Various – London is the Place For Me: Trinidadian Calypso in London, 1950-1956
Various – Music of the Magindanao in the Philippines
Various – OHM+: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music
Various – Township Jazz ‘n’ Jive
Various – The Complete Sun Singles
Various – The Doo Wop Box
Various – The Pig’s Big 78s
Various – Ultra-Lounge, Vol. 1: Mondo Exotica
Yma Sumac – Mambo!

Into New Dimension's self-titled album from 1981 is highly recommended to any Boogie/Modern Funk fiends. Got tipped to it from a Numero newsletter but I don't think they're planning to issue it.

I haven't listened to it in years but John Cale's "Paris 1919" sounding pretty masterful this morning.

bought Never Mind The Bollocks on sunday. have never owned a copy, but did have a tape of the picture disk done by a friend at the time and i rinsed that tape so it was all very familiar.

Universal UMC release, (c)2012, the cover looks green and orange from some angles / in some lights, the more familiar yellow / pink in others.

That's really cool! The yellow/pink cover was the UK version, while the pink/green was the US version. I got the US version first and was surprised years later to see the yellow one. Is the cover lenticular, or is it some other printing trick?

several title sin the Rermegacorp package I bought over Xmas.
Sun Ra from the Detroit Arts Cebntre in 1980 and Italy in 1978 or Beyond the Purple Star Zone/Oblique Parallax and Media Dreams respectively.
Pretty other.

Kew Rhone by John Greaves/Peter Blegvad etc
very quirky lp by memebers of Henry Cow and Slapp happy and a supporting cast of great contemporaries.

Camberwell Now All's Well compilation of pretty much all of post This Heat band's work had me kicking myself for not going and seeing them 40 years ago. Less guitar than This Heat but that's been replaced by other instruments.

Kampec Dolores Concert
Band I've wanted to check out for ages, think I've known the name but not the music for decades. Pretty great melange of Eastern European folk/jazz/RIO & other prog stuff. Sounds like players are pretty great. I want to investigate them further.

Faust Ravivando I think this fits here since it's 20+ years old.
Hadn't checked out much of teh reunion era material for some reason. THis is brilliant industrial psychedelic stuff sounding like vast corroded metal structures.

plus some other stuff
Gun Club Miami, think I'm hearing things in this that I hadn't before Blixa Sounds remaster sounds pretty great. But this is an lp I have loved since the mid 80s.

Spirit Clear.
got given this by a friend a couple of months back but only just got around to putting this on. Had played 2 other titles by them I was given by the same person,. I did have this years ago on vinyl but hearing it again this week on multiple plays on my 3 changer has been great. Does knock me out.

really nothing special about the cover, it's a very bare bones release. the colours might just be a sunlight / artificial light thing. or my eyes.

it's not this one https://www.discogs.com/master/30445-Sex-Pistols-Never-Mind-The-Bollocks-Heres-The-Sex-Pistols

it's this one https://www.discogs.com/release/12811260-Sex-Pistols-Never-Mind-The-Bollocks-Heres-The-Sex-Pistols

Kew Rhone by John Greaves/Peter Blegvad etc
very quirky lp by memebers of Henry Cow and Slapp happy and a supporting cast of great contemporaries.

I just listened to this a few weeks ago. I file it under "interesting and not likely to be pulled out more than once a decade".

Yeah i have that, but haven't listened to it in ages.

Kampec Dolores Concert
Band I've wanted to check out for ages, think I've known the name but not the music for decades. Pretty great melange of Eastern European folk/jazz/RIO & other prog stuff. Sounds like players are pretty great. I want to investigate them further.

Oh that's a remote name yes! IIRC they opened for Pere Ubu here in the... late 80's I think? I remember liking it well enough to buy a cassette.

What is RIO?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rock_in_Opposition

(…and she dances on the sand)

I am in an ecstatic college rock trance right now and the reason is that I just listened to Grant Hart's Intolerance for the first time. This is An Album That's Been Missing In My Life. Had "The Main" on a compilation album titled SST Acoustic as a kid

https://i.discogs.com/yWgHDHumv4zV_6PEExHu-6gtc8XztG7SFm9fE4EmFOg/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:600/w:561/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTI1MDM0/NTAtMTQyNzQ3MTUx/OC0xNzY0LmpwZWc.jpeg

which I guess was Ginn's attempt to get some of that sweet, sweet, early 90s Unplugged money. He got mine. But I had never really latched onto Husker Du beyond the Eight Miles High/Makes No Sense At All single, and The Main didn't appeal to 13-year-old me as much as Negativland's Nesbitt Lime Soda song (and I definitely didn't get the drug references) so it just got filed away in "catchy songs that rise up into my head from time to time."

That happened again last week. I decided to actually listen to the song for the first time in 30 years and this time something clicked. Downloaded it in Spotify but didn't have time to give the whole album a listen until tonight on a walk. This album came out swinging and just kept coming. By the time I got to Twenty-Five Forty-One, the deal was already sealed for me, but the second half of the record was no let-down.

I don't even know if this is considered a "classic album." The Wikipedia article on it lists a couple of 4/5 reviews and a Christgau "B". But it fuckin' should be.

It’s a fine record, & there’s gems to be found on all his records. Miss him.

It’s a fine record, & there’s gems to be found on all his records. Miss him.

Yeah, I think this thread stretches the definition of "classic" sometimes, but I'm always happy for the recommendations.

My most recent answer for this question is Jan Johansson's "Jazz Pa Svenska".

My expectations were pretty muted going into my first listen (Swedish folk songs as minimalist jazz?) which probably worked to my benefit, because my guard was down, and then before the first track was finished, I knew this was my new favorite record.

It's not really jazz, since there isn't much improvisation to speak of. But it's got vibes for days (plaintive, languid, intimate). And it's so spare and elegant that it feels like there's not a note out of place. Sort of like "Gymnopédie No. 1" meets "Take Five”.

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/thumb/7/74/Jan_Johansson_-_Jazz_p%C3%A5_svenska.jpg/220px-Jan_Johansson_-_Jazz_p%C3%A5_svenska.jpg

You might like Bernt Rosengren's Plays Swedish Jazzcompositions:

https://www.discogs.com/release/9910574-Bernt-Rosengren-Quartet-Plays-Swedish-Jazzcompositions

I was assigned a review of a Rosengren album a few years ago and wound up buying four or five more of his albums from the label.

https://i.discogs.com/pURUfwl-NRXc47l5A6gt8BM0uP8xM4NkiRMGGiEDT1g/rs:fit/g:sm/q:90/h:225/w:225/czM6Ly9kaXNjb2dz/LWRhdGFiYXNlLWlt/YWdlcy9SLTExOTE0/NzUwLTE1MjQ2NTk1/OTktNjQ4MC5wbmc.jpeg
I#m npt sure to what extent I was aware of Louis Prima before I got an earlier Best of cd. I knew he had played King louis in The Jungle Book for a while, though that may be more I knew King Louie was played by a performer called Louis Prima who I don't think I had much more of a reference for. That was pretty good as a cd but I think the sound was pretty quiet and the tracklisting wasn't very long. Think it came out in around 1990. This is much more recent and much longer. I think it covers his mid 50s material in depth and some of his 60s. 2x full length cds which each could carry a few of his lps. I think they're jumbled though.
Anyway pretty unrestrained for a mid 50s mainly white orientated group. He was frm New Orleans and Italian background both of which he played on to the hilt. He is joined on most of this material by singer Keely Smith who hasa pretty great voice and i think I will be investigating in her own right. I also really love the playing of a few of teh players here. The relentless piano for one and the use of electric guitar. Not sure who would be influencing an electric guitarist at this point, it is still pretty early. I guess Charlie Christian was a decade and a half earlier, Oscar Moore is playing with Nat Cole still I think, some blues guitarists had some prominence too. Not sure who this guy has picked up on but I know I like it. Rock 'n'roll is happening at about the same time. I'm assuming his is more jazz oriented, seems pretty driven anyway.
I know Bear Family put out a volume of their Rocks series dedicated to Prima and I'm assuming a lot of that si on here. I think the quality on that series is quite reputable. & I do think this is an artist worth checking out. I think his values are largely of the time , somewhat gagging at the idea that he nicknamed his singing partner/sometime wife Keely Smith 'Tonto' because of her part indian roots.

Prima's great. I have an 8CD Bear Family box of his stuff. He's not just a really unique vocalist, kind of combining Louis Armstrong-esque jazz singing with hammy, vaudeville-style ethnic comedy, but also a very hot trumpet player, and Smith (who was, I think, his fourth wife) was an excellent foil for him, kind of making fun of him and the rest of the band while joining in. (Her solo stuff isn't that great — she's a good singer, but mostly did string-laden ballads; I think I'd rather have heard her doing a somewhat hip, Blossom Dearie type of act on her own.) And the band, who had the awesome name of Sam Butera (the saxophonist) and the Witnesses, swung really hard.

I thought the Capitol lps by Smith were supposed to be good and whatever the next label was had her losing whatever quality control she had had.
Do love the name The Witnesses. Is it gospel oriented or something?

I have a different 2CD comp which looks like it covers a lot of the same, mostly late '50s, material as the one above: Louis Prima & Keely Smith With Sam Butera & The Witnesses – Ultra-Lounge: Wild, Cool & Swingin. It's a blast - the instrumentation is coming more from a jazz direction, but the energy is frequently more rock. Unfortunately from what I've read, Prima's philandering was eventually too much for Smith, and she left the band (and the marriage). While it lasted, her voice was the perfect foil to Prima's.

OK, so I've been listening to the last four Death albums — Human, Individual Thought Patterns, Symbolic and The Sound of Perseverance — for decades. They're amazing. But I had never really paid much attention to the band's first three albums: Scream Bloody Gore, Leprosy and Spiritual Healing. Somehow I had the impression that they'd made a quantum leap on album #4, and I didn't really need to hear the "cruder" early material. Well, I was so fucking wrong. I'm writing a review of a "best-of" that's mostly tracks from those records, plus two from Human, and now I'm diving deep into early Death and holy hell, these guys were titans from Day One. I have really been missing out!

Is the Psychedelic Furs' s/t considered classic? It seemed pretty classic on first listen (their only other album I have is Mirror Moves, which I also love). Really interesting mix of first wave british punk, doors/VU darkness, what else? I really like how committed they are to their aesthetic - that long slow build into the opening track.

It's a classic in my house.

The first three P-Furs albums range from awesome to exceptonal.

"India" is certainly an all-time great first album opener

Did John Hughes soundtracks prevent the early records from making it into the cool post-punk bin?